Dirty Bertie

by Stephen Clarke

  ‘Cannes was his headquarters . . . but his realm of elegance and pleasure spread as far as Menton and Nice,’ Paoli says. ‘Each of these resorts competed for the honour of a visit, and he increased their prosperity by attracting a vast British colony.’ Even before becoming a monarch in name, Bertie was, says Paoli, ‘the King of the Côte d’Azur, and where pleasures were concerned, nothing was decided there without his assent’.

  Bertie’s pleasures while he was down south were (in no particular order) gambling, dining, going to the theatre, womanizing and yachting. When he started visiting Cannes more or less annually, the town was already a glittering society capital, with banquets, costume balls, gala evenings at the theatre, a regatta, and sporting events such as horse-racing and pigeon-shooting, as well as less formal get-togethers – what the French called ‘le five o’clock’ (a tea party) with games of ‘croket’. Though in fact, as of the 1880s, the biggest pleasure of all for Bertie must have been the considerable relief of breathing warm French sea air instead of London’s smog particles and Sandringham’s damp vapours.

  The local newspapers would always announce Bertie’s arrival, sometimes months in advance. In October 1885, for example, the weekly Courrier de Cannes reported that Bertie would be coming the following January and that his stay would last ‘at least a month and maybe two. Let’s hope the last figure prevails.’ The locals knew that Bertie’s presence would ensure full hotels and a crowded social calendar. In July 1888, the same paper went so far as to repeat a rumour heard by a Monaco journalist that Bertie had been telling friends in London that he intended to spend more time than usual there the following winter. The Cannes journalist deduced, with much rubbing together of hands, that ‘English high society will follow him, as usual’.

  And this it did. Bertie’s arrival always coincided with a long ‘Liste des Étrangers Arrivés’ (List of Arriving Foreigners) column in the society section, detailing who had just settled in at which villa or hotel. Many of these chic tourists would reside at the Hôtel Prince de Galles – not that Bertie stayed in the hotel named in his honour. According to the papers, the Prince of Wales favoured other addresses like the Hôtel de Provence, the Réunion de Cannes, a selection of private villas and, as of 1893, his own racing yacht Britannia.

  There were always a few lines in the Cannes papers when Bertie left England or Paris bound for the south, and when he arrived in town, usually on the train that pulled into Cannes around 1 p.m., there were speeches on the platform. However, the accounts of his various arrivals seem to imply that Bertie was in a hurry to get on with the fun – on 14 February 1888, for example, the Courrier de Cannes reports that Bertie arrived by ‘luxury train’ at 1.12 p.m., to be greeted by an official welcoming committee of twenty people and a speech from the deputy mayor.

  ‘With a few courteous words,’ the article reveals, ‘the Prince thanked Monsieur Millet [the deputy mayor] for the enthusiastic and friendly welcome that the town gave him every year’, and then hurried off to settle into his apartments. On that occasion, it was no wonder that he was keen – printed on the same page was the guest list of a dinner at the Cercle Nautique (yacht club) that same night, that included his lover the Princesse de Sagan.

  Not that she is labelled as such, of course, and there is not a whiff of overt scandal in any article about Bertie, as there would have been back in prurient, puritanical England. The Cannes papers afforded the Prince all the discretion necessary to keep him coming to the town. For example, in 1895, we are told that Bertie paid a visit to the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, but not that the Grand Duchess was a beautiful young Russian called Anastasia, unhappily married to a husband who was known for his weak heart and asthma – and who often left his wife alone in Cannes. The closest we get to gossip is after one visit to the Grand Duchess (who is named on her own this time), when we learn that ‘cette entrevue a été assez longue’.

  We know from the newspapers that there were often famous women of dubious reputation performing at the theatres during the winter season – in February 1889, Bertie was in Cannes at the same time as Sarah Bernhardt, who was putting on her famous production of Fedora, the tragic story of a princess who is in love with a womanizing count (and that is not a misprint). There is no record in the newspaper of Bertie and Sarah meeting up on this occasion, but it’s hard to imagine the two avoiding each other.

  Bertie was also reunited with another former lover, the actress Jeanne Granier, in Monte Carlo, where the two apparently had a fond get-together in a hotel room in 1889. It was said that Jeanne kept the Prince amused for a whole evening with hilarious anecdotes about the Paris theatre scene. But of course she may well have amused him in other ways, as well.

  Similarly, another actress-cocotte, Caroline Otero, nicknamed la Belle Otero,2 was often on the coast in winter, under contract to attract clients to the Monte Carlo casino. Again, she is known to have entertained Bertie as a client/lover, but the local newspapers keep mum about it.

  If there were no scandalous actresses due to perform, Bertie had them shipped down specially from Paris. Once, after dropping heavy hints to an American friend that he would like to see the shocking chanteuse Yvette Guilbert, she was brought to Cannes at enormous expense to sing at a private dinner. When she toned down her act for the refined company, Bertie begged her for her ‘most delightfully Parisian items’. Guilbert’s repertoire included ditties like ‘L’Hôtel du Numéro Trois’ which talks about a squalid hotel where ‘the maid isn’t very beautiful, but everyone makes love with her’, and ‘Belleville-Ménilmontant’ (named after two poor areas in Paris), in which she reveals that ‘my brother-in-law makes a fortune pimping my sister Thérèse’. Bertie was so delighted with Yvette’s show in Cannes that he invited her to London to perform in front of the ladies and gentlemen of the court. Fortunately, very few of them would have understood her Parisian accent as well as he did.

  Although Bertie’s stays in Cannes were very public affairs, with his daily engagements published in the papers, it is possible to read between the lines and find hints of the illicit fun he might also have been enjoying. For example, on 8 February 1883, he was at a soirée given by a certain Lady Camden at her villa, and amongst the guests were ‘Mistress et Miss Chamberlain’. This Miss was Jane, the daughter of an American millionaire, who was one of Bertie’s favourites at the time, and who was seen with him in Paris the following year, when the police recorded her as the Prince’s maîtresse-en-titre (his ‘officially appointed mistress’ – the Parisians, of course, have different grades of lovers).

  A more tantalizing reference comes on 15 February 1887, when the Prince attended a seventeenth-century-themed ball chez Lady Murray. Bertie’s costume isn’t mentioned, but one of the guests, a certain Miss Townley, went as Diane de Poitiers, the notorious mistress of France’s King Henri II. Diane de Poitiers was so sexy that Henri’s wife, Catherine de’ Medici, used to watch her husband’s adulterous couplings through a hole in the ceiling in the hope of picking up bedroom tips. Was this Miss Townley sending out a message to Bertie? Did he pick it up? If so, was his chat-up line based on the fact that her costume was a century too early for the evening’s theme, because Diane de Poitiers lived from either 1499 or 1500 to 1566? The newspapers don’t tell us. The last thing they wanted to do was gossip and scare off their biggest tourist attraction.

  Bertie was the nineteenth-century equivalent of a superstar. Just as the arrival of a world-famous football player can guarantee a club’s fortunes for a season from the sale of tickets and replica shirts, so Bertie’s regular residencies in Cannes helped the town, and the whole coast, to prosper.

  But it wasn’t all about economics. Bertie was also completing his seduction of the French people. As a younger man he had become a welcome fixture on the Parisian scene. Now, in middle age, he was winning the undying affection of the Mediterraneans, all of it thanks to his warm personality. Although he was a prince, he was also a team player, and joined in with any
fun that was on offer. He regularly took part in the Nice bataille des fleurs, part of the carnival, during which everyone would throw locally grown daisies, mimosa and fleurs de lys at each other as they drove along the Promenade des Anglais in their carriages. Visitors dressed up in carnival costumes, and Bertie once went disguised as Satan, with a red cape and horns. Quite daring for a future head of the Anglican Church.

  After watching Bertie at the carnival one year, the French police noted that: ‘He enjoys himself like a young man, laughs at all the grotesque scenes and afterwards takes great pleasure in describing the day’s events.’ They sound almost surprised that he should be so human.

  But Bertie’s greatest strength was that he was always so personable. In March 1896, he paid a short visit – just forty minutes – to the Cannes flower show. A very brief stop, with little opportunity to admire the displays or talk to anyone. Even so, he made excellent use of his time. According to the Courrier de Cannes, as Bertie was leaving the showground, he caught sight of an old man wearing a medal that he recognized (Bertie was an obsessive connoisseur of medals). ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, ‘I see that you were among the brave men who fought in the Crimea campaign. I am happy to shake your hand.’ The old man was so touched by this gesture that he was left speechless – and Bertie had won yet another friend and admirer, as well as earning himself a glowing write-up in the press.

  The concrete proof of the affection he earned came in 1912, two years after his death, when a statue was erected in Cannes in his honour. He was not depicted in the usual monarch’s stately uniform, but as a sailor with a yachting cap set on his head at a racy tilt, and a telescope tucked under one arm. This marble Bertie, who was torn down by Nazi sympathizers in 1943, was gazing fondly out towards the horizon – which was a pity because sprawled at his feet was a naked girl, her modesty barely covered by a sheaf of flowers. She was designed to symbolize the town of Cannes, which – like so many French females – reacted to his presence by getting undressed and prostrating herself in front of him.

  II

  In the early 1890s, Bertie’s health took a turn for the worse. He was diagnosed with what his doctors called ‘gouty muscular rheumatism’, and had to give up dancing. He still went to the south of France most winters, but a sense of melancholy pervades some of the newspaper reports of his visits. He stayed on his yacht Britannia more often than on land, and attended far fewer functions, though the Courrier de Cannes managed to put a positive spin on the Prince’s reduced socializing, saying: ‘[He] wants to live peacefully, rest and enjoy the region’s delicious climate.’

  The melancholy was understandable, because Bertie suffered some serious blows to his morale at this time. In 1891 his leg was so gouty that he had to cancel his trip to the Côte d’Azur altogether. In January 1892, his eldest son Eddy died of flu just after his twenty-eighth birthday. Even though the young Prince had been a dissolute throwback to the family’s Hanoverian genes, the loss was a crushing blow to Bertie and Alexandra, who descended into months of gloom. During the year of official mourning, all fun was forbidden, and this inactivity, according to one of Victoria’s cousins, the Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, turned Bertie ‘very fat and puffed’. In March of 1892, he made a trip to Cap Martin, between Monaco and Nice, but it was a mournful exile with Princess Alexandra, as well as an attempt to avoid the rampant influenza virus that had killed their son.

  After Bertie’s new yacht was delivered in 1893, he enjoyed the regattas at Nice and Cannes, and even won a few prizes, but he must have got the increasing feeling that he was losing the most important race in his life – the one to outlast his mother. She was looking immortal, especially because she was using the same health-preserving tactic as he was, and coming to the Riviera.

  What was more, surprisingly for such a resolute widow, Victoria was also giving Bertie headaches because of her infatuations with male servants. First there had been the Scotsman John Brown, the kilted valet who had been by her side for more than ten years, helping her in and out of carriages, talking back to her with coarse common sense, sitting for her sketches, and sleeping at night in a neighbouring chamber.

  To Bertie’s relief, Brown died in 1883 of a streptococcal infection at the early age of fifty-six, but a few years later he was replaced by an Indian called Abdul Karim. Also known as the Munshi (teacher) because he taught the Queen Hindi and Urdu, Karim quickly rose from waiting at table to the role of a surrogate John Brown. The closeness between a servant and a queen had been almost tolerable when it was a Scot, but the ladies-in-waiting and male attendants were aghast when they were ordered to treat a colonial as their equal.

  From 1892, the Munshi was included in the small party that accompanied Victoria to the Riviera each spring. It sometimes came as a surprise to her visitors when the turbanned Karim was introduced to them. According to a report in the less-than-respectful Birmingham Post in 1893, King Umberto of Italy apparently thought that the Indian was a captive prince, kept by Victoria as proof of her power over her colonies.

  In March 1897, Karim’s presence on the south coast of France caused a scandal in the royal household. He had been diagnosed with gonorrhoea (a disease most commonly caught from prostitutes), and the other servants threatened to resign if he came on the Queen’s annual trip to Cimiez, a hilltop suburb of Nice. Victoria threw a fit, accusing her servants of racial prejudice, and the Munshi came along, but the holiday mood was spoilt by constant tensions at the villa. Bertie, who was wintering on his yacht Britannia at Cannes, was called in as a peacemaker by Victoria’s doctor, but he didn’t have the courage to confront his mother.

  She, meanwhile, seems to have enjoyed the rumpus, admitting to her doctor that the arguments about Karim were a source of excitement in her old age. The Munshi inspired an almost girlish sense of mischief in Victoria: in 1899, when snobbish members of her household again demanded that Karim stay away from Nice, she left him behind, only to telegraph him as soon as she arrived, telling him to follow on.

  These holidays in the sun seem to have brought Victoria out of herself. She could see foreign friends and relatives like the Emperor of Austria and the Prince of Denmark without crossing half of Europe. She even showed signs of spontaneity and energy. During that tempestuous season of 1897 Victoria organized an impromptu jaunt along the coast to Cannes to have tea with her daughter Louise, who was another fan of the Riviera, mainly because of the gambling. According to the society column in the Courrier de Cannes, ‘the news [of Victoria’s arrival in town] was immediately passed on to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales’. It is easy to imagine Bertie grumbling into his beard at having to come ashore and make small talk with his mother – and the omnipresent Karim.

  But this was Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee year, and Bertie set aside any impatience he might have about inheriting the throne to play a key role in organizing the festivities. Driven by his social conscience, he suggested using the grand state occasion to raise money for hospitals. He was also determined to make sure that the poorer citizens of London would get a good view of the proceedings.

  There was pressure to hold a ceremony in St Paul’s, but Bertie supported an idea that would allow Victoria to sit peacefully in her carriage rather than have to climb painfully down in full view of the public. The main event was therefore a parade through London on the morning of Tuesday, 22 June 1897. First, Victoria, who had dressed up in what was for her a wild party gown – black silk with silver embroidery – was driven from Buckingham Palace to St Paul’s, where her carriage stopped and she remained seated while a service of thanksgiving was held. The procession then continued through six miles of streets festooned with flowers and bunting, with onlookers leaning out of every window, and filling all the seats on specially erected grandstands.

  Thanks to Bertie’s influence, his mother’s rare tour of her capital city also took in the poor neighbourhoods south of the river, and everywhere she went, Victoria received deafening cheers and renditions of ‘God Save the Queen’ as co
ngratulations for her longevity. ‘A never to be forgotten day,’ she wrote in her diary. ‘No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me.’ If anyone thought she was tired of reigning, they were wrong.

  Bertie put on a glorious scarlet field marshal’s uniform for the occasion, but took a back seat – literally. A short piece of newsreel film of the procession shows Victoria beneath a parasol accompanied in her carriage by her daughter Helena and Princess Alexandra. Bertie, in a plumed hat, was on horseback behind them. As he rode around London playing the guard of honour, he must have been wondering when, if ever, it would be his turn. Two of his young nephews, Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas, had already inherited their crowns, while he was still waiting. His mother was frail, but winters in the south of France were keeping her going. And he was no spring chicken himself, even though he was trussed up like one and broiling in the sun beneath his feathery helmet.

  The celebrations were a great success. Encouraged by Bertie to come out of her shell, the normally reclusive Queen managed to be more sociable than ever, attending receptions for – to name but a few – MPs, lords, schoolchildren and the country’s mayors. She reviewed troops, attended a torchlight procession at Eton and paraded with firemen.

  The only major event at which Bertie had to deputize for his absent mother was a review of the fleet at Spithead, near Portsmouth. As he stood on the deck of the royal yacht Victoria and Albert, the full might of Britain’s navy – more than 150 ships manned by over 50,000 sailors – rode at anchor in the Solent, firing cannon salutes and generally showing off their capacity to rule the waves. It was the greatest assembly of naval strength the world had ever seen, and the lines of warships were said to have totalled thirty miles in length. As was the custom in these cases, there was little or no sense of military secrecy, and the fleet was observed by crowds of foreign visitors – there were journalists, visiting admirals and guest vessels from, amongst others, France, the USA, Russia, Japan and Germany. For once, though, Germany’s contribution to the display was a huge disappointment.